Want to know if digital entrepreneurship is the right path for you?
In this post, we’ll talk about building an online business. We’ll talk about the process from ideation to market research, to launch. We’ll discuss monetization strategies, marketing techniques, and more.
What Is Digital Entrepreneurship?
Why It’s Thriving
A digital entrepreneur is someone who creates and manages a business that primarily operates and serves customers online.
With the rise of the digital economy, this method of entrepreneurship has also become not only mainstream but also viable.
The benefits of online business include:
- Potential to reach a larger audience
- Has a high growth potential
- Lower overheads and costs
- Scalable and flexible
- Adaptable meaning you can pivot to other products or services easily
Identifying Profitable Online Business Ideas
How to Research Market Trends
Finding an Audience and Niche
Before conducting market research, you need to first identify the industry and audience you’re targeting. How do you do that? We recommend looking for the intersection of your interests, your skills, and profitable opportunities within that.
Finding a profitable niche or identifying a gap in the market is not always easy. But market research can help you find where you fit in the grand scheme of things.
Market Research
Market research involves identifying patterns and behavior of a specific people group. Through research, you also discover specific needs that you can then create an innovative solution for. You can also conduct online surveys and interviews to assess needs and interests.
This process involves researching up to date on recent news and developments in the field/industry you want to infiltrate. This includes advancements in methods and technology.
Competitor analysis is also crucial. It helps you identify the threats and opportunities of going into that space. You can identify gaps in their offerings and areas in which you believe you can serve customers better.
Validating Your Business Idea
After conducting market research and analysis, you can start brainstorming business ideas.
Once you’ve found that niche or intersection we talked about, you’ll want to create overarching goals and objectives. Make sure you have a unique, sensible, and attention-grabbing value proposition.
Towards the end of this process, you’ll have created a product or project prototype to test its viability.
A small-scale test launch will help you put feelers out and allow you to collect feedback.
Building a Strong Online Presence
Creating a Professional Website
Digital business entails the need to create a virtual storefront. It’s great for branding and can help you draw in more customers.
The website should be well-designed – easy to navigate and attention grabbing.
Creating an effective landing page is also essential to drive conversions from PPC advertising or organic SEO marketing.
Leveraging Social Media for Business Growth
A majority of famous people and companies recognize the value of social media marketing. They know engaging with audiences boosts their brand recognition and fuels growth.
Developing a Content Strategy
Content marketing involves creating persuasive and educational content. This helps you boost engagement and improve your conversion rates.
Monetization Strategies for Digital Entrepreneurs
Selling Products or Services Online
E-commerce and online selling have never been bigger.
Digital entrepreneurship gives business owners the opportunity to sell to the world. You can do this through online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay.
You can sell products that other people manufacture or manufacture and sell your own. An alternative is to sell products and services to people through your website. These can be skills that you’ve made profitable or services you’ve developed with the help of a team.
Affiliate Marketing and Partnerships
Affiliate marketing involves reaching out to celebrities and popular social media influencers to promote your product or brand to their audiences. In exchange, they earn a commission every time they sign up for your service or purchase your product.
Fostering partnerships and networking with other online businesses and digital entrepreneurs offers a mutual benefit. By relying on each other for specific services, you can expand your reach, improve quality, and beat out the competition.
Subscription and Membership Models
You can also scale your skill set as a tier based subscription service. Also, you can offer exclusive perks and content to people who pay extra to become a member. These can include sneak peeks into product development, exclusive surveys, or just extra services and functionality. You can build this functionality into your own website or through popular platforms like Patreon.
Additionally, consider offering loyalty programs that include perks for your repeat customers and dedicated supporters.
Managing Operations in a Digital Business
Automating Business Processes
You can leverage the advantages of AI and automation to serve you. Automation can help you speed up and streamline your most labor-intensive processes. For instance, it can assist in processes that involve data input, gathering, analysis, and even interpretation.
Financial Management for Digital Entrepreneurs
Proper financial management ensures you stay organized, compliant, within budget, and overall stay in business.
Financial management helps you understand cash flow, spending habits, and identify opportunities for growth.
Online entrepreneurs can leverage accounting software to make this process much simpler. Their built-in automations help with reconciliation, tax calculation, invoicing, and so much more.
Legal Considerations for Digital Businesses
Privacy and Security
As with any business that gathers customer data, owners must comply with data security, data handling, and privacy laws.
Because of the online nature, they also have to invest a significant amount into cybersecurity. Otherwise, they risk getting hacked and getting subsequently sued.
Intellectual Property
They also need to consider intellectual property rights if they work with creatives. They need to make sure they have proper clauses for that in their virtual assistant contracts.
Ecommerce Laws
If you consider online selling, you need to read up on ecommerce laws and regulations.
Local Regulations
A basic but sometimes overlooked aspect is properly registering your business entity.
This also includes knowing and paying the right self-employment, payroll, property, and other tax obligations.
Scaling and Growing Your Digital Business
Expanding Your Online Presence
There are multiple ways you can grab internet-goers’ attention.
Here are a few strategies:
- Using multi-platform marketing
- Using various social media marketing methods like reels and shorts
- Hiring a social media manager
- Social media engagement practices such as liking and answering comments, sharing posts, forums, surveys
- Leveraging SEO, PPC and content marketing
Building a Team to Support Growth
Maybe you’re an independent contractor who likes to run a one-man show. That’s completely fine.
However, if you’re a business owner that wants to scale. You need a good team behind you.
Building your team begins with having a solid mission, vision, and objectives. Having a clear “why” will attract the right people. This also helps when hiring and interviewing candidates where you can gauge their interests and priorities.
Having a team with a growth mindset is one thing; ensuring they have that environment to flourish is another.
Before they contribute to fulfilling your business goals, you should invest in creating and maintaining a positive remote team culture.
Diversifying Revenue Streams
Here are three ways you can diversify:
- Think of new products you can offer. These can be separate products or better yet, products that complement your previous releases.
- Think of ways you can expand the services you offer. You can do this vertically by expanding the depth of skill or horizontally by learning or outsourcing related skills.
- Think of other markets and demographics you can reach.
Steps to Launching Your Digital Business
Finalizing Your Business Plan
Your business plan is your roadmap. It contains your summary, description of company and offerings, market analysis and strategy, and your budget and financials.
Finalizing this plan involves ensuring you thoroughly review these key elements. They need to make sense and align with your mission, vision, and values. Make sure your analyses, budget projections, and strategies still make sense.
Also, make sure you have feedback mechanisms and your KPIs and OKRs in place. This allows you to track the effectiveness of your plan and correct it when necessary.
Launching and Promoting Your Business
Digital entrepreneurship requires a strong digital marketing strategy.
Having a physical location is itself a kind of advertising. They have signages, storefronts, and even interior design elements to draw customers in.
That’s the handoff. If you go digital, you can’t rely on customers walking past your new store. You can make your website and virtual storefront as beautiful as possible, but without proper marketing, no one will see it.
You need a strategy that combines your social media presence, your website, organic marketing, and an advertising campaign across platforms.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the biggest risks associated with digital entrepreneurship?
- Customers don’t sign up or purchase your product
- No outsourcing/remote management plan
- Data privacy and security risks
- Large digital marketing investment may not yield the desired results
How can I fund my digital business startup?
Startups can procure funding through angel investors, venture capital, crowdfunding, or financing options such as small business loans.
What are some effective ways to retain customers in an online business?
- Loyalty programs and membership perks
- Providing excellent customer support and service
- Implementing upselling and cross-selling strategies
How do I stay updated with the latest digital marketing trends?
- Join communities, forums, discussions
- Participate in digital marketing events
- Take the latest online marketing courses
- Keep up with digital marketing news and publications
- Subscribing to newsletters
Can I start a digital business while working a full-time job?
Absolutely! The flexibility of digital marketing means it can be an additional source of income you can work on in your free time. If you play your cards right, it can even be a source of passive income.
What Is Outsource School?
Outsource School helps you to unlock the potential of virtual assistants and accelerate your business growth.
This is the exact system Outsource School’s founders, Nathan Hirsch and Connor Gillivan, used to go from zero to 8 figures and 40+ virtual assistants with an exit in 2019.
Since being founded in 2020, Outsource School has helped 1,000+ business owners hire 2,000+ virtual assistants for their companies.
Schedule a free sales call to learn more
Free resources you might like:
- Outsource School Case Study: How We Scaled to 45+ VAs and 8 Figures in Revenue
- Free VA Calculator | See How Many VAs You Can Afford
- Free Training on 5 Keys to Working With VAs
- Learn Outsourcing 101 | Guides, Downloads, and Checklists
Conclusion
Digital entrepreneurship opens you up to a world of possibilities. While you have the potential to reach a wide audience, make sure you’ve done the right market research and analysis.
If you want to know more about how to grow your online business, you can check out our list of entrepreneurship podcasts.
